This was one of the first games I completed in 2018 and as the year comes to a close, it remains at the top of my list. I had very little experience with the Ys series before this game, but luckily the stories are independent, so I decided to jump right in. The game plays out as a really fast-paced action RPG with lots of areas to explore, enemies to slay, and a nice story to push you forward. The basic premise is you're shipwrecked on an island and one of the first things you do is start finding other survivors to build up a makeshift town. Most of this is tied to the story, but there are still some optional bits to it.

There are also some tower defense opportunities, which was a nice change of pace. Again, some of these are story-related, but you can continue playing new (or old) ones as much as you want.

It took me a little over 50 hours to complete everything and I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. It's probably too long for me to ever replay, but this one will stick with me for a while.

As you may already know, Shining Force III is actually comprised of three different "scenarios", each of which were released as standalone games in Japan. When Sega ported the first scenario over to North America, they called it simply "Shining Force III", but it is in fact only one-third of the full game. The port was released towards the end of the Saturn's life and thus, we never received an official English-translated release of the other two scenarios. But that didn't stop some awesome Shining Force fans from putting in a lot of hard work on English fan translations for Scenario 2 and 3!

I finished Shining Force III (i.e. Scenario 1) many years ago and it's right up there as one of my favorite games of all-time. As you might expect, this one features the exact same gameplay and even the same story, just from a different perspective. And I have absolutely no problem with that. Now on to Scenario 3!

Hooray, I finally beat a Might and Magic game! I've tried playing both Might and Magic VI and VII in the past and while I really enjoyed them, I just couldn't seem to finish them. I would always hit a progression wall and felt like I made it as far as I could. I decided to give this one a final try and I plowed through it! I'd say this was the game that hooked me the most all year long, I really couldn't stop playing.

I still had some issues with progression at times, but I toughed it out and I'm so glad I did. This game is all about exploration, solving quests, and building up your characters. It does all of those remarkably well, even though it's 20-ish years old. If you like RPGs and are okay with some quality-of-life concessions that come with playing a game this old, I highly recommend picking it up on GOG.

This was the biggest surprise for me all year. I knew very little about Moss, but when it started racking up great reviews, I decided to check it out. It's a VR game that features lots of platforming, puzzle solving, and action. The VR component isn't really necessary since this game would've been fine without it, but at the same time, the VR implementation made this game! I know that probably doesn't make any sense, but if you try this one out, you'll see what I mean. Even though you play from an overhead-esque perspective (not the traditional first-person viewpoint like many VR games), the game felt so immersive.

The story was simplistic, but really well done and the music was excellent. My only complaint is that it's just too short. It took me less than 3 hours to finish this one and that was with a fair amount of exploration and hauling in a good chunk of the collectibles.

Before this one, I had only played the three main-line God of War games and I enjoyed them quite a bit. Sure, they were all basically the same game, but they had a really nice formula. Well, they threw that formula out the window with this one! Pretty much everything has received an overhaul here. I found the combat to be much more cerebral rather than mashing buttons and rather than being on a mostly linear path, you have a rather large open world to explore (eventually). The story felt a lot more mature as well in tone. The original games were mature only by virtue of having buckets of blood and constant violence, but this one was just more....grown up. And it was really good.

This was another game that I've tried playing many times over the years, but I could never manage to finish it. For Vagrant Story, my issue was always the complicated equipment system. The battle system is really fun, but I would always hit a point where I couldn't damage enemies anymore. So this time I did a little bit of research beforehand and it worked out pretty well.

I enjoyed the story in this one, but I found it was sometimes hard to follow since there were such large breaks in between cutscenes. There were also a bunch of box puzzles that slowed things down to a crawl at times. But overall, this is a fun and very challenging RPG that has aged surprisingly well...if you give it the time.

I was a big fan of The Stick of Truth and this one is every bit as good. It felt similar, but yet different at the same time. I prefer the fantasy theme in the last game, but I think I enjoyed the battle system in this one more. I've mainly only seen episodes of the show from the first few seasons, so I didn't get all of the references, but it's still filled with laughs if you're okay with the South Park style humor.

It took me a while to warm up to the combat in this one, but once I did, I could hardly put my controller down. I had a lot of fun just roaming the map, exploring new areas, killing metal beasts, and constantly unlocking skill upgrades. The story was solid, though I felt it suffered from some pacing issues. I guess that could've been self-inflicted since it's an open world and you can just roam until you're ready to move on.

I was pretty pumped about this game since it was the first main-line Dragon Quest game released for a North American console since Dragon Quest VIII way back in 2005. I love the Dragon Quest series and RPGs in general, but I just can't get into them on handhelds, so I missed out on Dragon Quest IX and the various 16-bit remakes.

The nostalgia is really strong with this one and I'm kinda surprised the game ended up as low as it did on my stack. While the core gameplay is fantastic and the production values are through the roof, I couldn't help but feel the game had a lot of unnecessary bits that caused the story to drag on longer than it should. But hey, I sunk a collective 200+ hours in Dragon Quest VII and VIII and I'm sure I would say the same thing about those if I played them in my ripe old age!

I worked at Electronics Boutique when this game first came out and I knew nothing about it. But when I saw the box for the first time, I was very intrigued. I was a huge fan of other strategy games like Age of Empires II and Heroes of Might and Magic III and Kohan sounded like it would be somewhat of a mixture of those. We ended up getting a copy traded in, so I quickly applied my employee discount and dug into it. It was a really fun game, but boy was it tough! I struggled to make it anywhere in the campaign and ended up just playing random maps until I decided to retire it.

I tried a few times over the years to get back into it and I would always end up feeling the same in that the game is really fun, but I'm just not any good at it. And then earlier this year I randomly decided to try it. I was hooked once again, but this time I buckled down on the campaign and made it through. It felt just like it did when I first played it back in 2001 and I highly recommend it if you're looking for an old school RTS challenge.